Yet Another Monster Mash

The weekend before Halloween can only mean one thing, America. . .

It is once again time for the Hough's Annual Halloween Party.

This ended up being our third go-round with this, and definitely not our last.  We went a little overboard this year, adding significantly to our Halloween tote stockpile, and purchased additional items to help with the party's 'atmosphere,' if you will.  Colored lighting, a fog machine, creepy video looping, additional interior - and exterior - decor, etc.  I'm sure in a few years our Halloween tote count is going to rival our Christmas tote count.

Anyway, folks had a great time, there was a crap-load of awesome food on hand, and we once again solidified our status as the go-to costume party of the Halloween Season.

Behold. . . the Third Annual Hough Halloween Monster Mash.

Like last year, BP and his family came up a few hours early so him and I could catch up and visit before I had to put on my Hosting pants.  He brought up a slow-cooked pulled pork that was awesome (and appropriately named 'zombie flesh.')

The Study is the designated Husband zone of the house whenever we have parties, and sure enough all the dudes could be found in here throughout the night.

Preparing zombies.

This year, like in the past couple of years, we let the girls pick out our family's costume theme.  Alayna was set on Ancient Egyptians, and eventually was able to get her sister to go along with it.

I assisted in this effort by showing the girls Youtube clips of famous female pharaohs from history, and they pounced on the opportunity to dress up as their favorites.  Alayna decided to go as Cleopatra.

Watching the shredding of zombie flesh. . .

While zombie flesh was simmering in a crock pot, and all the females in the house were busy with costumes and make-up, BP and I worked on fixing the hack-job I did on my SNES Classic.  As I told you before, this baby cost something like $80, but was rarely in stock.  I was fortunate enough to nab one last spring, and, despite the fact that it came pre-loaded with 32 classic SNES games, BP showed me how to hack the machine to load hundreds of more on it.  I did this last summer, but for some reason my uploaded ROM files from the NES, Sega Genesis, and GameBoy Advance systems wouldn't play.  After an hour or so of working with it, we were able to upload a few more, but ultimately we couldn't get all of them to work.  Still, I ended up with about a hundred or so SNES games on it, which I'm definitely not complaining about.

Prepping the craft table in the basement 'kid zone.'

The DeBoers prep for their photo op (Kris once again set this up in the basement.)

Abby (also known as Queen Nefertiti) is not amused.

The DeBoer Family, as the Super Mario Bros.

Nefertiti and Cleopatra.

Ramses II (more commonly known as Ramses the Great, greatest of all Egypt's pharaohs), Nefertiti, Cleopatra, and Queen Hatshepsut.  It helps when Dad is well-versed in Ancient History, having taught it for years.

. . . and featuring Watson.  We got our family's Halloween pics out of the way before all the guests began to show up.

As always, the Halloween spread this year was pretty insane.  This is what Pinterest does to moms. 

The Youn Family, as The Little Mermaid's Ariel, and some dude from Minecraft.

Our next-door neighbors, Dave and Sherri, at far left, showed up this year, which was cool.

The Larson Family, as the Odd Squad.

The Circle of Dads, deep in low-brow conversation. . .

The Kyro Family, as Pac-Man (and a dinosaur.)

Kris and Courtney

The Charles Family, as a Star Trek medical officer. . . aaaand a unicorn.

The Order of Moms.

Inflatables are HUGE these days.

 

The Johnson Family, as Medusa and her victims.

This is about the best couple picture we had from the night.

The Shepherd Family, as characters from Grease.

Maddie and Sophie.  I ended up wearing my hat like this a good portion of the evening, because the way it's supposed to be worn, I had no peripheral vision whatsoever - I was bumping in to all kinds of stuff.  By the end of the night, I was just wearing my trusty Rancid trucker hat around.

The Davis Family, as. . . who the hell knows.  Bunch of random stuff, I guess.

The Mom Zone.

Photobomb, courtesy of Andrew.

The Collier Family, as random characters from Hotel Transylvania and Thomas the Train.

No idea what Cristy is doing here. . . I didn't take this, Kris took most of the cell phone pics.

Pete and Andrea danced along to the whole number of 'Summer Lovin',' which was blasting on the Alexa in the kitchen.

Then there was some Sir Mix-a-Lot going on in the living room.  After a couple hours the party was definitely pretty random.

At some point in the night, Alayna grabbed Kris' phone and some selfie stick Kris won at Kroger (long story), and took a series of pictures with her friends. . .

See ya next year, kids. . .

- Brian

All That Was May

One of our backyard gardens, pre-mulch restoration.

Happy Last Day of May, Internet.

This month consistently ranks as one of the year's busiest, surpassed only by November, December, June and July.  As temperatures heat up, and nature itself begins to scream out for attention, one suddenly finds themselves surrounded by weekend activities (social obligations, house/yard obligations, kid-related obligations, etc.)  Every weekend is consequently filled up, and so one attempts to squeeze more time out of the weekdays, after work and school.  By this point in the school year, everyone's wrapping up shop with last-minute tests, end-of-the-year planning, and room clean-up, and being busy with all this bullshit makes time go insanely fast.

Aside from this month's previous posts, what follows are some leftover randoms from other stuff that happened around these parts during this month, the last hectic gauntlet of the school year.

Enjoy.

Tulips blooming in the front garden bed.

Some animal keeps scurrying across the black mulch, revealing the shittier light brown mulch underneath.  If I can find what ever animal is doing this, I'm going to f***ing kill it.

We have these tulips blooming up all over the dang place.

Abby had a sleepover with her friend Sophie towards the beginning of the month.  Here they're dancing along to one of our Wii U Just Dance games.

Behold the Super Nintendo Classic - a miniaturized version of the original SNES, preloaded with 32 games, 1080p resolution, and HDMI and USB compatible.  I'd been keeping an eye on this system since it first dropped over last summer, but with such a short supply available these things had a tendency of selling out in minutes.  They're only available on Ebay and Amazon at an insane mark-up (usually about twice what they're supposed to go for), but I miraculously was able to snag one during my lunch break at school one day during a flash sale, and scored it at its normal price.

Being the ever-industrious fellow that I am, I further upped the system's awesomeness by hacking into the console's operating system and uploading about 150 Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo, and Gameboy Advance games.  Couple hundred classic videogames ready to go on a single, wallet-sized console in my bedroom?  Don't mind if I do. . .

Abby assists Alayna in. . . sooooome sort of science-ish experiment.  That I'm sure irreparably damaged and/or stained something in the house. 

We found this in one of Abby's bathroom drawers, left behind by her slightly-demonic older sister.  When asked about it, Alayna casually explained that she was just 'leaving behind a prank.'  They did that sorta 'prank' in Vietnam, people. 

Abby decorated one of Kris' coffee mugs for Mother's Day.

During one of my school's Spirit Weeks, students got to dress up as one of their teachers.  I had quite a few kids dress up like me (apparently, I wear a lot of grey and black - wasn't aware of that until this month, actually), but this girl colored a pair of white shoes to replicate my pair of Asics I wear to work.  My students jokingly give me hell for having 'horrible shoes' all the time - since they're not, like, Jordans or something - so this was definitely hilarious.

For the last month or two, my riding lawnmower has been acting weird.  At first I attributed this to a weak battery, and after charging it up in the Spring, and letting some Stabil and other fuel crap run its way through the engine,  the mower seemed to work fine.  Then, one day, I started it up and engaged the PTO, and the engine seized up.  Wouldn't turn over at all, despite the battery being fully charged, the fuel tank being full, the oil recently changed, and new spark plugs put in.  I reluctantly called a local specialist to come pick it up, and when he did so he located one small fuse that had blown, and recommended I change that first.  I did so - it cost about 20 cents and took about 6 seconds - and ever since then this thing has run like new.  I'm a f***ing idiot.

Abby's actual birthday fell on, like, a Tuesday this month, so after dinner we let Abby open up one of her birthday gifts from us. . .

She's been asking for light-up 'rollerblades' for about a year now.  We were going to pull the trigger on them at Christmas, but figured her birthday was bound to be more weather-appropriate.

After nearly 14 years of valiant service, Kris and I decided this month to finally put our old couch and loveseat up for sale.  We'd been keeping an eye out for a sale on the sectional we had seen at Godwin's a couple months back, and we finally found one that we couldn't pass up.  I was willing to frickin' give away the couch and loveseat for free (like we did with the matching recliner, about two years ago), but Kris wanted at least a little for it.  In the end, a couple typical college dudes swung by and paid us $50 for both, and hauled away our old fart-ridden, Fezzig-nibbled, kid-colored, dog-soiled memories.  After the set was gone, we had about four days of a near-empty living room (see the available seating in this pic here) before the sectional arrived.)

Unfortunately, when the sectional arrived, one of the reclining pieces was broken, and they forgot one of the inserts.  I was on the verge of calling and cursing someone out, but Godwin's rectified the situation the following morning (replacing the broken piece and bringing the missing one.)  Shown here, all we're missing is the console insert (check it out here) - which will be showing up in early June, thereabouts (they had to back order it.)

One of the reasons we got this particular sectional was the back cushions can't be shoved down like they could on our old couch, which Watson loved because it gave him a comfy seat for his window gazing.  He's pretty pissed at us right now, and sulks in this spot most of the time.

Dad and Cindy swung by our house one weekend, towards the end of the month, to give the girls their birthday presents, seeing how Dad wasn't going to be around for the girls' upcoming combo-birthday party (remember? I talked about this - the trampoline thing.)

The girls are to that age now where they don't really play with toys anymore, and have soooooo much shit already clogging up the basement and their rooms that they don't have much space for anything else.  Dad and Cindy slipped each kid a $50, which, as you can see here, went over rather well.

. . . same goes with these shirts that they threw in, too.

Birthday-ish girls.

Trying out her new light-up skates at the local roller skating rink, Roll Arena.

On an afternoon family bike ride down to the BMX park at Stratford Woods Park. . .

We didn't end up staying too long, though, since there were some pretty ominous storm clouds barreling down towards us.  We stayed about five minutes, then rode the half-mile back to our house, making it just in time before the heavens opened up and all hell broke loose.

The Sunday before Memorial Day, we dropped the girls off at Marcy's and went over to a grill-out at my old high school buddy Trevor's house.  Here's the familiar deck where I practically lived during the Summer of '97.

Meanwhile, hanging out with Grandma Jordan in Clare. . .

Kimmel and Scrunge were supposed to be around, too, but both were forced to cancel at the last minute.  Matt Lee and his girlfriend were in town, though, visiting from San Francisco for the week.

This dude cooked up a ridiculous amount of food - chicken, ribs, potatoes, you name it.

We stayed until the evening, then swung out to pick up the kids from Marcy before heading back to Midland.

The next morning, Kris, the girls, and the city's various Girl Scout troops all marched in the annual Memorial Day Parade.

(Alayna's behind the kid at the right - you can barely make out her head and sunglasses.)

Abby fails to realize this is seriously like the worst time one can possibly drop an American flag. . .

More flowers, this time on the back of the house.  No idea what these are, but I know I hate them for being Farwell colors. . .

- Brian